On-camera LED light - proportions

[David Grantham]

On my micro-budget HD dramas I sometimes need to fill in shadows on the spot, usually in closeups. Interiors mostly but I'll need this for exteriors too - maybe more. If a light can provide fill in longer shots, so much the better, but it's for the closeups where it's crucial.

 

I'm looking at a couple of on-camera LED options. From what I can tell all specs are the same but for the proportions.

 

One's 4.5x7.5", the other 3.5x10". (Any smaller light than these and shadows are visible with movement.) .

 

Any recommendations? NO local source to try each out, and I'm wondering how the performance will vary between the much narrower/longer one and the squarer one, but I"m leaning toward the longer - seems to me it's the least likely to cause shadowing around a nose (though perhaps at the expense of evenness in the frame vertically...)

 

(Not inclined to go with a ring light because I don't see the absence of any shadowing being worth giving up the possibility of lighting from a direction. Open to challenge on that.)

 

Any thoughts, experience?

 

thanks.